The boxes hit the street at the end of the month and Paul Kember, HP UK and Ireland country manager for Industry Standard Servers (ISS), tried to drum up support from the channel.

"This is a tech refresh opportunity," he said. "The market is still crying out for cost savings and we talk about a five month ROI. Gen8 will pay for itself in five months compared to the previous generation."

The machine are engineered to self-maintain, said Kember. He added that he reckoned this would free up resources for service providers to gear up for higher margin areas.

The UK server market is dominated by public sector and financial services customers, neither of which "want to spend money", said Iain Stephen, HP UK and Ireland veep for Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking.

"Most customers want less than 18 months to two years ROI. If you can attract the right level of financial interest from customers there is an opportunity," he said. ®